Business Process Integration

LANSA Composer is a design and execution platform for integrating business activities involving transport and transformation of data and custom business processing. It satisfies the four key requirements of a business process integration solution: Transport, Transformation, Process Orchestration and Administration. LANSA Composer is often used for EDI communication with third parties as well as for a coordinated exchange of information between internal systems.

Allied Beverage Group, LLC, New Jersey's largest distributors of wines and spirits, uses LANSA Composer for several integration solutions. One of these is the routing of Allied's fleet of 50 trucks. Using web services, LANSA Composer exchanges information with a third party solution from UPS Logistics Technologies, refreshing the information about the location and status of deliveries every 15 minutes to Allied's DB2/400 database. The solution, in its final stage of beta-testing, will allow customers to get a near real-time update on the status of their deliveries via Allied's new Microsoft Silverlight customer web portal, which connects to the DB2/400 database via LANSA. LANSA Composer is also used to transmit daily sales and inventory information to suppliers as CSV files.

American Health Care (AHC), a software solution provider based in Vermont, USA, offers Harmony Health Care Management System, which is used by Senior Care Communities across the USA. Harmony uses LANSA Composer for integration with third parties, for example:

Exchange of physician orders with pharmacies (NCPDP and HL7)

Receiving and processing of test results from laboratories into the E.H.R. module (HL7).

Receiving details from therapists regarding the amount of time spent on a resident (XML), recording this as part of the resident’s treatment plan and exporting it for billing.

Checking the interactions of multiple medications against each other (web service with TruvenHealth), showing a bright red warning in eMAR in case of a contradiction.

Exporting information in XML format for uploading in the government's portal.

Balitrand SA, based in Cannes, is one of France's leading hardline retailers, with over 20 stores spread over the south of France. The information for Balitrand's product catalogue comes from many suppliers who send their files in various formats, such as, CSV, XLS and XML, by email or FTP. Until recently, supplier product and pricing updates were applied manually to the catalogue. This was a time consuming task occupying a full time resource from Balitrand's sales team. Balitrand has started a project using LANSA Composer, to fully integrate and automate the process.

Baustoff Union (BU), is a leading provider of building materials, construction services and equipment rental services in Bavaria, the largest state of Germany. BU uses SMH ERP since 1997, a solution from LANSA's German business partner S.M.Hartmann. The ERP solution's functionality, originally RPG based, has been modernized and gradually replaced using Visual LANSA. LANSA Composer has been used to extend the solution with the ability to send and receive orders in XML and EDI format and to send invoices in EDIFACT, PDF and customized formats. Read the case study

Casa International NV, headquartered in Belgium, is a specialist retailer of interior decorations, gifts, tableware, garden furniture and small furniture. With over 500 Casa shops, Casa is Europe's largest retailer in cozy living items. Casa carries about 6,000 items in its catalogue, a large part of which is also presented online at www.casashops.com, a site maintained and hosted by an external marketing company. Casa and its marketing partner are implementing a new digital assets management system with product information management using the FLO-suite in an Adobe InDesign environment. The solution uses LANSA Composer to automate the process of transmitting real-time updated item information from Casa's core ERP system to the digital asset management database. The information is exchanged in XML format and includes item specifications, special promotions etc.

Eagle Systems, Inc. (ESI) is part of the Eagle Group based in Wenatchee, Washington, USA, a leader in intermodal transportation and container repair with locations throughout the USA and Canada. Eagle has recently implemented NetSuite Financials, a cloud-based solution, but will keep using its heavily customised IBM i-based ERP system to run its transportation management business. To synchronize and integrate the two disparate systems in this hybrid cloud environment, Eagle uses LANSA Composer and web services. The solution

keeps the customer master and other key files in synch

posts tens of thousands of ERP invoices and credit notes to NetSuite, and

lets Eagle's on premise ERP system interrogate its cloud-based instance of NetSuite in real time to check customer account balance.

Eagle is also using LANSA Composer to automate EDI and other transactions with its partners and to streamline the individual process flows and FTP transmissions with its container maintenance customers.

Frederic Printing, an RR Donnelley Company located in Aurora, Colorado, USA, offers an extensive range of printing services, including advanced mailing and fulfillment, digital and offset printing, commercial and over-sized printing, and the latest in print technology platforms. Frederic Printing uses LANSA Composer to automate the workflow of order processing, allowing its clients the flexibility to use a variety of data formats and delivery methods. The LANSA Composer solution is implemented in a Windows MSSQL environment and manages receiving of orders and shipping information, order acknowledgement and confirmation, shipping notifications and invoicing, file management and archiving, and even some internal administrative tasks. The solution has saved Frederic Printing considerable manual labor, hugely increased its print-on-demand capabilities, and facilitated better responsiveness and quality of service for its customers.

Green's General Foods, based in Australia, produces and distributes food products, such as baking and pancake mixes, crackers, cereals and popcorn. Green's has found a way to wind back their RPG-developed ERP modifications without losing any custom functionality. It took one business analyst only two or three months to replace over 150 RPG with LANSA's Business Process Integration solution. Custom processing is now managed by that business analyst, rather than a developer. Green's evaluated several other middleware/BPM products and estimates that the cost of implementation would have been at least double as compared to the solution implemented with LANSA Composer. Read the Case Study

Groupama AC is a subsidiary of Groupama Assurance, the 5th largest insurance company in France. When rating their potential future clients, Groupama AC uses several risk assessment criteria. Agents, responsible for customer management, use the services of specialized companies to collect the required information. Access is through web portals, by manually querying a database, or by using third party software to the back-end systems of the service provider. Groupama AC uses LANSA Composer to provide a fully automated data collection process using the web services request/response capability of the underlying LANSA Integrator product, removing the need for agents to manual query and navigate to a web portal. The application triggers a LANSA Composer process which sends the data to the rating server for direct integration into the back-end system.

Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp, USA (KMM), is part of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. Both the Lincoln Consumer Products plant (KMM CP) and the Maryville engine plant use LANSA-based solutions on IBM i power servers, but independent from each other and tailored to the individual needs of each plant. KMM CP's supplier portal, underlying ERP system (LANSA ERP Frameworks) and the entire process of generating purchase orders, packing slips, box labels, invoices and EDI transactions consists of LANSA-based applications. Behind the scene the portal generates EDI transactions using LANSA's original EDI Direct tool. LANSA Composer is used for EDI transacting with Kawasaki's Rail Car Division, who runs SAP. Read the Case Study

Norfolk Iron & Metal, Co. , (NIM), a Steel Service Center headquartered in Norfolk, Nebraska USA, has evolved from a hide and scrap metal company founded in 1908 to become one of the industry’s largest and most technologically advanced carbon steel providers. NIM uses LANSA Composer in a Windows environment to exchange data with trading partners, such as steel vendors, outside processors and customers.

Composer's automated FTP/SFTP retrieval and processing capabilities are used to poll file locations to retrieve EDI documents, as well as flat files from those trading partners that are not EDI capable. Where agreed with a trading partner, PKI encryption and authentication is applied.

Composer’s processing sequences are used to validate the files against EDI standards, add data fields and rename files. Data is then mapped to temporary database files and verified against business rules, before being transferred to NIM’s ERP platform. Composer’s MOVE activity is used to move files between Receiving, In Progress, Error and Archive, depending on the status of the transformation. Last but not least, Composer’s ZIP activity is used to move files from the Windows Server to long term storage.

The integration solutions have helped NIM to increase accuracy and efficiency and to lessen the amount of time needed to respond and make decisions. NIM will continue to pursue additional integration projects using LANSA Composer.

The Pantry, headquartered in North Carolina, USA, and now part of Circle K – South Atlantic, was a leading convenience store chain with over 1500 stores in the south eastern states, operating under select banners, including Kangaroo Express®. Its stores offered a broad selection of merchandise, as well as fuel and ancillary services. The Pantry had to report monthly on fuel sales and tax in the 13 states it operated. The reporting standard was EDI ANSI X12 813, but each state subscribed to a different format with different versions of the standard. For example, some states used XML and web services instead of ANSI X12. Monthly processing involved preparation of the tax data in Excel spreadsheets.

LANSA Composer automates the transformation of the spreadsheets to the required format for each state, by working out which map to use and which fields to map. It has allowed The Pantry to standardize its reporting, improve accuracy and reduce the number of retransmissions due to errors. The Pantry didn’t have developers on staff and the company's Tax Analyst for Motor Fuels/Sales was self-sufficient in using LANSA Composer. Composer is deployed in a Windows VM environment at The Pantry. Due to the acquisition by Circle K, The Pantry will be phasing out this solution eventually.

Port Autonome of Dunkerque is the leading French maritime port of the North Sea, the third most important port in France, and the seventh largest port in Northern Europe. The port uses LANSA Composer for a solution that serves as a hub to collect tax related data from the shipping companies that make use of the port's facilities. The data is converted to XML format and sent to the French customs authorities via secure SMTP. Customs sends back the statements of the taxes these shipping companies have to pay and the taxes are collected by the port authorities. LANSA Composer's auditing facilities log the email transmission and receipt acknowledgements of every email message, ensuring that all the checkpoints are met.

Promese is the largest manufacturer of CDs and DVDs in the Benelux region and offers its retail customers to take care of the logistics and fulfilment of media consumer orders. This logistics part of the business worked so well that Promese has more recently extended it to also include fashion logistics. Promese uses both LANSA Composer and LANSA Integrator.

Promese offers each of its retailers their own individual web site, built with Magento, where consumers can order products. Promese takes care of the administrative and logistic fulfillment of the consumer orders. The integration between the Magento web shop application and Promese's back office IBM i-based core distribution system is handled with LANSA Composer using XML transactions, both for the outbound updates to the web shop and the inbound orders.

LANSA Composer also integrates Promese's tailor-made LISA system which handles the order intake, credit control and invoicing, and their SAP system using CSV transactions. Integration with the fulfillment and logistic area is based on the web service capabilities of LANSA Composer.

Data exchange for CD and DVD orders, returns and dispatch information between Promese and its retailers (and their customers) is in CSV format via FTP, while data exchange with the (more recently implemented) fashion logistic customers is mostly in XML format. Retailers can request to receive an overview of their sales orders, stock movements and returns in Excel format via email or they can download the same information via the web portal. PDF invoice documents are encryped using Integrator's PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) services and either emailed or FTP-ed to the customer.

Robinson Manufacturing Company, based in Dayton, Tennessee in the US, is a supplier of basic and fashion boxer underwear, loungewear and activewear to both the retail and wholesale markets. Robinson uses Visual LANSA to redevelop its core applications and also to offer a web portal to its vendors. Robinson uses LANSA Composer for numerous projects:

UPS address validation, where LANSA Composer validates the address and classification with UPS via a SOAP HTTP/XML Request and Response

STRATTEC Security Corporation, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the world's largest producer of automotive locks, keys and related security access control products for global automotive manufacturers. STRATTEC uses System21 and wanted to streamline parts of this application to provide better customer service and improved productivity to users. STRATTEC uses LANSA Composer to automatically retrieve aftermarket customer orders from iConnect (its EDI VAN) in XML format, and transform them to a System21 interface file for processing. Strattec uses LANSA Composer for other EDI transactions as well and is planning to streamline procedures for production customers by replacing its Future3 EDI solution with LANSA Composer. Read the Case Study

The Terminix International Company, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee USA is part of the ServiceMaster family of brands and the largest termite and pest control company in the world, safeguarding over three million homes and businesses in the U.S. and 14 other countries. Terminix LANSA based core system is used by 12,000 employees at over 400 locations and 5,500 service specialists with wireless hand-held devices. The system also interacts with an increasing number of third-party systems using LANSA Integrator and web services.

More recently, Terminix used LANSA Composer to automate the remittance processing with third parties, such as mortgage providers, who include with their monthly statements an insert advertising Terminix services. Homeowners who take up on the advertised offer will see the fee for Terminix services added to their next monthly statement. The process of accepting the customer's order, invoicing and processing of the payment is completely automated between Terminix and its partners, with LANSA Composer processing multiple EDI transmissions for each customer. Read the Case Study

Wells and Young's Brewing Company is the UK's largest privately owned brewery and a leader in cask beer and premium lager. The company's portfolio includes some of the UK's best loved beers and premium lagers. Wells and Young's is standardizing on using LANSA Composer for its EDI communication with external parties, as well as for establishing a formal process for exchanging customer product information between its ERP implementation and various other internal systems.

Wells and Young's first EDI project involved an AS2 solution for exchanging EDI transactions in TRADACOMS format with the main distributor. Several other EDI projects followed. LANSA Composer is also used to exchange customer data between internal systems, such as the System21 ERP system, Kelros CRM, Lotus Notes and an in-house developed Enterprise Information System. Read the Case Study